Humanism, Secularism, Feminism

Taslima Nasreen

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction, nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

Taslima Nasreen was born in Bangladesh. She started writing when she was 13. Her writings won the hearts of people across the border and she landed with the prestigious literary award Ananda from India in 1992. Taslima won The Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament in 1994. She received the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Award and Human Rights Award from Government of France, Le Prix de l' Edit de Nantes from the city of Nantes, France, Academy prize from the Royal Academy of arts, science and literature from Belgium. She is a Humanist Laureate in The International Academy for Humanism,USA. She won Distinguished Humanist Award from International Humanist and Ethical Union, Free-thought Heroine award from Freedom From Religion foundation, USA., IBKA award, Germany,and Feminist Press Award, USA . She got the UNESCO Madanjeet Singh prize for Promotion of the Tolerance and Non-violence in 2005. She received the Medal of honor of Lyon. She got honorary citizenship from Paris, Nantes, Lyon, Metz, Thionville, Esch etc. Taslima was awarded the Condorcet-Aron Prize at the “Parliament of the French Community of Belgium” in Brussels and Ananda literary award again in 2000.

Bestowed with honorary doctorates from Gent University and UCL in Belgium, and American University of Paris and Paris Diderot University in France, she has addressed gatherings in major venues of the world like the European Parliament, National Assembly of France, Universities of Sorbonne, Oxford, Harvard, Yale, etc. She got fellowships as a research scholar at Harvard and New York Universities. She was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in the USA in 2009.

Taslima has written 35 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since 1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

EVENTS

I feel safe because I do not live with a husband or a boyfriend.

I was reading today’s news about how a doctor woman was killed by her doctor husband in Pittsburgh. I was thinking how they lived their family life in their nice beautiful house, whether they woke up in the morning and said good morning to each other, and then had breakfast together, whether they used to go to parties, theaters, vacations together, come home, watch TV, make love! What kind of life a couple could live when one planned to murder the other one? I imagined Dr Robert Ferrante as my husband. I told him about my happiness and sorrows, about my childhood and my youth, and about my love and my dreams, he listened to me and planned to kill me, I was cooking the food he liked and I was serving him dinner every night, while he was sitting on a dinning chair planning to poison me. I was passionately making love to him while he was planning to eliminate me. And one day he finally murdered me.

It does not happen only in Pittsburgh in the USA, it happens in Pirozpore in Bangladesh, in St. Petersburg in Russia, in Porto Novo in Benin, in Piteå in Sweden as well.

Comments

I am currently in class, taking a few minutes reading the blog while my students are practicing writing the letter “P”. One of the example words I used was “Piteå”. I’ll remember this coincidence for the next time someone tries to tell me of a coincidence from their life, which they took as evidence for ESP or god or whatnot.

This should be “I feel safe because I do not live with an evil husband or a boyfriend.”

You would be much more credible in the community if you stopped this over-generalization. This has been pointed out to you many times, by many people. I don’t think your understanding of English is so bad that you fail to get the point.

If someone wanted to set up a satirical blog to mock feminists, one thing they would do would be to over-generalize, as you do. Someone less familiar with you might actually mistake your blog for some sort of joke, over-the-top satirical spoof of feminism. Do you really want that? Note that the purpose of activism is not to convince people who already think like you do, but rather to convince those who think differently. Over-generalization damages what should be your own cause.

I thought you would be mad at those men who murder their intimate partners. But you are mad at me and accusing me of ‘generalizing’ . I didn’t say ‘evil husband’ because no woman marries an evil man, a woman marries a man and that man becomes an evil man later, and nobody knows which man would become evil and when they would become evil. It’s my personal decision not to live with a husband or a boyfriend because i dont want to take risks of my life. You can say I am over cautious about it, but I am not over generalizing. You probably know that women are murdered mostly by their intimate partners whom they love, not by their enemies, or their stalkers or total strangers.http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/violence_against_women_20130620/en/

You can say I am over cautious about it, but I am not over generalizing

Er, yes you are. How many married men kill their wives? The murder rate in total in the US is 4.8 per 100,000 ( or 0.0048%)…and the percentage of those being spousal murders is roughly 50%…for a total of 0.0024%. So, putting into context of the number of married couples that end in murder (even if all of them are murder by the husband) doesn’t even get in the ballpark of 1%….much less something that you can characterize as an issue that any sane, rational person should have primarily in their mind about living with a husband or boyfriend.

To be stating that you are not over-generalizing is not only completely false…but wildly false. This is about as over-generalizing (and, yes, over-cautious) as it gets.

Now, if you want to talk about worries about abuse, rape, and other things that you actually have a realistic chance of encountering, I’m completely with you. But in regards to what you posted, Phillip is correct in pointed out the absurdity of it.

It’s almost a cliché that when someone turns up dead, cops and such look to their partners and relatives first. I don’t quite have the patience to look it up right now, but most murder victims are killed by people they knew.

And, a female is much more likely to be killed by a male partner, then a male killed by a female partner.

srsly, some of this is just fuckin common sense – take two populations, one with a greater size and muscle mass, and more prone to violence (in addition to being reared in a culture that praises aggression and dominance), and another population that is culturally indoctrinated to value pacifism and submission. Is there really any question about which population is going to turn out to be the aggressor?

I thought everyone knew that, statistically, a woman who is married or in a relationship is far more likely to be killed by her significant other than by a stranger. I don’t know for sure if the corollary is true that a woman who isn’t in a relationship is safer than a woman who is, but it seems quite likely. As a guy, I wish this wasn’t true, but if wishing something was true made it true, then we’d all be god believers, wouldn’t we?

As a skeptic, when a person makes a true statement, you don’t have the luxury of claiming to be offended. The “but I’m a nice guy!” card is old. And the swipe at Taslima for being a furriner makes you look even more petty.

95% of the killings ( domestic crime/murder) execute by man- it is not an exaggeration and the evidence is staring us in the face .
Statistics collected from all countries & societies can support this assertion . Reason for this mismatch is natures selected gift to man . Woman cant compete ( by default) with man’s physical force and aggression- and this will continue

“I thought you would be mad at those men who murder their intimate partners.”

Of course I am. But pointing out something else shouldn’t make you think I am not.

Most married women are not killed by their husbands. That’s why the generalization is bad. It is a common failure of logic to claim that criticizing a generalization is equivalent to not taking the individual claim seriously.

There have certainly been times and places when most white people who were killed were killed by black people, even though most black people didn’t kill anyone. Should one say “I feel safe since no black people are around here”?

Some men become evil, some are evil when they marry and manage to hide this. Which case applies is irrelevant to the person killed.

Poor Phillip. Men can never accept when they are wrong. This is why the world is in the sad state it is. You are angry that someone pointing out that it might be best for women to keep men at arm’s length and not allow them to become to intimate in their lives. This is how I live my life. I have my own space and occasionally allow a man in it and then soon it is time for him to leave. I cannot speak for all women, but this is how I like it. My choice.

More generalization. Maybe this blog is satire and many of those who comment sock puppets.

Even if a) I am wrong and b) don’t admit it, where does “men can never accept that they are wrong” come from?

A Frenchman was killed by an Italian. Should all French say “we will be killed if we go to Italy”?

Your choice is your choice. But that doesn’t give you the right to generalize. I am married to a woman, my choice, but I don’t criticize people who choose differently, nor claim that people who choose differently are unsafe, unhappy etc.

I’m kind of in the middle here. I agree with Phillip in the sense that most married women aren’t killed by their husbands. In fact most aren’t murdered at all.
But I feel safe when with my husband, and indeed, being married brings me great joy. For he and I value eachother’s companionship and love, and I simply enjoy life more with that other person in my life.
Even if the risks were higher that I would die from this experience, I accept that risk in exchange for the value I get out of it.
Sure, it’s not for everyone, but neither is sky diving, rock climbing, binge drinking, etc.

Phillip, that’s too bad. You poor, put upon, dear. Tell us how hard and unfair it is for you to feel as if you are being lumped in with the all the men who are KILLING WOMEN. Yes, it is so hard to be you. I mean having to confront the fact that women are often beaten, raped and murdered by the men they trust must be tough. I, as a woman, cannot possibly imagine how horrible that is to have to consider. I mean, it must be so hard on you wondering if you are being unfairly judged, whereas it is so easy being a woman who knows that men frequently don’t see your humanity at all and that may lead to torture, rape and or death if you accidentally trust the wrong man (Who happens to look just like every other kind of man.) Why, it’s almost as horrible as actually being beaten raped or murdered, isn’t it? Gosh, let’s just stop talking about women’s issues on this blog and derail this thread to talk about your feelings and how Taslima can better see to your needs. After all, she didn’t please you precisely when she spoke of real fears and dangers in real women’s lives and you may have gotten your fee-fees hurt. That’s just not fair! You dudes are totally the ones getting shafted here and that needs to be talked about…alot. No matter how many times you are asked to shut up and listen every now and then and to stop trying to make every possible thing about you. It’s a good thing you are here to speak up for those REALLY suffering oppression and sexism, right?

Why suppose? This isn’t a thought experiment. This is happening. “Men” are not being unfairly accused, nor are they a dis-empowered minority. Men are actually killing and abusing women and have been doing so for some time. Where is your outrage for the dead women? Why is your outrage directed instead at a woman for not being charitable enough to men when she writes about them killing women? Are you so full of yourself that you think you are owed that much deference?

“You asked me to learn the word ‘ some’, but I haven’t used the word ‘all’.”

You still miss the point.

Suppose some Jews commit a crime, and the newspaper headline says “Jews are criminals”. Note: It did not say “all Jews are criminals”. But such a headline would probably, correctly, get the newspaper in trouble. It is simply a fact that if you leave out “some” and leave out “all”, then the default meaning is “all”, as anyone reading the headline example above can see.

I realize that English is not your native language, and I live in a country where the language is not my native language, but this has been pointed out to you so many times in so many contexts that continuing to ignore it only increases the impression that this blog is really satire produced by some anti-feminist creating a caricature of feminism.

From all the reports from around the world I read daily, I get the sense that most women married women who are murdered are done in by the men they have a relationship with. In some communities that is more true than others.
So: Taslima’s generalization is based on her Islamic experience , whci I think is valid for her world. But her point is not just murders of wives, bu the sheer frequency of abuse–in most parts of the world of girls and women.
Get the snese of the point, instead of nit-picking on her diction.

I feel safer living alone as well, and plan to for the rest of my life. I have had a few relationships where partners were jealous, vindictive, suspicious, manipulative, controlling, etc. This in itself is a checklist for an abusive relationship. Women, watch out for these traits when you are “with” someone. Men are dangerous! I don’t care if you think I am generalizng, because I feel I am not! Read your local paper sometime-look on the sex offender registry-ask your girlfriends about relationships with her father, boyfriend, spouse, etc. The truth is right there, and I am not afraid to speak it. I am a rape SURVIVOR. I am lucky to be ALIVE right now. I am a Feminist. I am an ACTIVIST who will bluntly speak about issues that are supposed to be “hush hush.” If more women did this, think of the impact it could make on the world. Why be afraid? Because of backlash? I agree that a woman must be careful because we do live in a patriarchy. No one can dispute that!

Well, I think most of you are right. It is true, that Women are most often hurt by relatives, and therefor might actually be more safe living alone. Living alone does statistically give us women a longer life, but also materially poorer life, and single men actually have skorter lifes than married men: http://sjp.sagepub.com/content/36/1/21.abstract. So living with a man is in general shortening womens lifes, and does give her a risk of being hurt by her own spouse.
On the other hand this doesn’t mean that all men are dangerous and violent. To say that is actually a generalization, I agree.
In Denmark, young muslim men are almost twice as criminal as ethnic Danish young men, but this doesn’t mean either, that muslim mens are criminal. Actually most of them are not (83% are not, but 17 % are). Is it dangerous to walk the streets at night with a group of young muslim men? Statistically it is more dangerous than with Danish men, but statistically, too, the risk of them being criminal at all is much lower than that they are not. Many people generalize and say, muslim young men are criminal, but actually, they are not. Is this fair? I don’t think so.
So most men are decent, and some are certainly not.
Society, on the other hand, discriminates women and teaches us to be afraid, not to defend ourselfs etc. That can be proven through study after study.

As a man, I might feel a little offended by the generalization, but I can also recognize that I have the luxury of being offended without having to worry about my safety, because the odds are pretty good that none of the women in my life are going to assault or kill me. When women can feel that same degree of security, my tender feelings might be worth worrying about. Until then, let’s try to focus on the real problem.

Presumably, to solve the real problem you need to convince the evil men, not the one who are not evil. Do you think generalization will help there? It will probably hurt. It is understandably difficult to take seriously arguments which are not presented in a factual matter, but in terms of generalization.

Again, replace “men” with “Jews”, “Blacks”, “gays” whatever if that were the group involved and ask yourself if that would positively contribute to the discussion.

Philip, first off, I don’t think most men, even the absolute bastards, think of themselves as evil, so acting as though that’s some self-selecting group which can be safely written off is probably incorrect.

Is it possible that otherwise reachable men will be turned off by what they see as unfair generalizations? Sure. Maybe as little as two years ago I might have been one of them. But to that I’ll make two responses. The first is that you never know what message is going to reach someone and raise his consciousness. Reading this piece might provoke defensiveness in a man, but it might also make him wonder why someone would make such a broad claim, and whether there might be something which supports it. The second point I’ll make is that a man who is on the fence about whether or not to act violently toward women is probably not immediately reachable in any event, so why worry about whether or not your message turns him off?

In response to your closing argument, I would say this: while the majority of men may not act violently toward women, a women who gets assaulted or killed was almost certainly assaulted or killed by a man, and probably someone she knew. In light of that, it’s not unreasonable for a woman to say “I feel safer because I limit the number of men who I allow to become close to me.” If most women who were assaulted or killed were assaulted or killed by Jews, blacks, or gays, then it might well be reasonable to replace “men” with any of those groups. Bigotry would be assuming an elevated risk of violence from a member of a group absent any evidence that members of that group present an elevated risk; since women are demonstrably at greater risk of harm from men than from other women, it is not bigotry to recognize this.

I’d add on to what rory is saying here. Phillip is quite right that “to solve the real problem you need to convince the evil men.” What he doesn’t seem to realize is that evil men get the way they are because of a culture that normalizes male aggression and often trivializes women’s legitimate concerns (as Phillip is doing).

It’s a bit like school bullying. It’s been shown how, for every bully, there are a certain number of people who egg him on, a certain other number who offer tacit approval, and a number of other people who are uncomfortable about the bullying but don’t do anything to stop it. In an exactly analogous way, for every wife-murderer, there are enablers who laugh at rape jokes, treat women as disposable objects, video games that glorify violence against women, etc. Just as the bullying drops when there are kids who are empowered to say, “Hey, not cool,” the violence will start to decrease when we reach some of these nonviolent enablers.

I think you said it really well above, Jackie. I’m glad that I’m a little more clued in on these issues now, and reading comments like yours all over FTB is probably one of the major things that’s helped me get there.

This reminds me of people who watch Investigation Discovery cases of wives killing their husbands and saying they feel safe since they don’t live with a woman. Very offensive and unwarranted. It’s not like most wives kill their husbands or boyfriends. In the same way, your statement was unwarranted, but I’m used to bigoted posts, like the other one that could be analogous with men degrading women’s small breasts (cept you were doing it with penises.) Tired of the hypocrisy.

I thought the *point* is that conventional wisdom states that a woman needs a man’s protection and is vulnerable without a husband or male partner, but the statistics suggest that *if* a woman is the victim of violence, the partner is the one doing the violence a very high % of the time.

I also thought that the whole point of the post was that women get killed by their husbands in supposedly advanced countries, not just in theocratic shit-holes.

The reality is that the brains of male humans are bathed in testosterone. It makes men aggressive, not by choice but but nature. We are lucky enough as a species to be able examine ourselves in a rational manner and make adjustments.

Yes I am mad at the men that kill their wives, and at the women who kill their husbands…(or the wives that cut off their husband’s penis)…and I am also mad at the women who put their babies in microwave ovens ( it mainly seems to be women). And I am saddened to see Taslima write such a shit article and I am saddened to see pathetic, moronic comments from people such as brucegee1962 and Jackie…nasty.

It should be a simple question to answer, statistically speaking: Is population A a victim of violent crime X more often than population B?

Population pairs A/B to consider:
–women with a male intimate partner/women without a male intimate partner
–women who live with a male intimate partner/women who have a male intimate partner but don’t live with him
–women who are pregnant when living with a male intimate partner/women who are not pregnant and live with a male intimate partner
–women who are pregnant when living with a male intimate partner/women who are pregnant while not living with a male intimate partner
–for the sake of thoroughness, substitute other genders in both of the above

Erin Pizzey aside, I am sure more women are killed by their partners than men. The OP however suggested a rational response was to avoid domestic partnerships. Given the probability of murder this is actually an irrational response and suggests a phobia. If this is really the conclusion Taslima has reached about men then I would have to doubt future gender based observations for obvious reasons of bias unstated premise.